The Golden State Open has been taking place in Concord, CA for the past few years. This year’s edition was particularly strong, attracting GMs Melik Khachiyan from LA, University of Texas at Brownsville student Mauricio Flores, Dejan Bojkov from Bulgaria, and GM Marc Paragua of the Philippines.

There were plenty of young upstarts making waves in Northern California. Samuel Sevian knocked off the #1 seed Mauricio Flores for his first ever GM Scalp. Flores tried to grab a c3 pawn in a rough position and was punished by some nice tactical play by Sevian.

Congrats to Samuel on his first, but certainly not last, GM scalp. I’ll have to keep my distance from here on out.

Sarah Chiang also scored a first round upset, defeating the solid IM Zhanibek Amanov as Black.

It looked like Enrico Sevillano was going to cruise into first after beating Melik Khachiyan in round 6. He was leading with 5 points going into the last round with white, but GM Bojkov managed to take him out with the black pieces in order to slip into first with 5.5/7.

John Bryant had an incredible tournament. On the last day he defeated GM Mauricio Flores in the morning and then beat IM Ricardo De Guzman with black in the final round to also snag a piece of first.